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THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 



A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE. 



BY 

ALBERT BARNES. 



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THE CONDITIONS OF PEACE. 



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A THANKSGIVING DISCOURSE 



DELIVERED IN THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA; 



NOVEMBER 27, 1862. 



J^ X4 13 E li T B ^ H IV E S 



PHILADELPHIA 
WILLIAM B. EVA 

No. 1334 Chestnut Street. 

1863. 




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Henry B. Ashmead, Printer, 

Nos. 1102 and IlOi Sansom St. 



CORRESPONDENCE. 

Saturdaf. 
Rev. Albert Barnes, 

Rev. and Dear Sir : — 

A very general desire is entertained by those 
who had the pleasure of listening to your Discourse upon Thanksgiving 
Day, that it should be printed. And many who from various causes were 
unable to be present when the Discourse was delivered, are anxious to con- 
sider and gain light and strength from the matured thoughts of one, for 
whom they not only feel a love and respect, but in whose judgment they 
repose great confidence. 

We earnestly request, that you will, as early as convenient, furnish us 
with a copy of the Discourse, for publication, knowing that in so doing we 
but express the wish of many, and believing that good cannot fail to result 
tlierefrom. 

With great respect, 
November 29, 1862. Your obedient servants, 

Ambrose White, 
Wm. G. Crowell, 
Samuel II. Perkins, 
James Bayard, 
John Sparhawk, 
Alexander Fullerton, 
Joseph B. Lapsley, 
Henry Perkins, 
Isaac C. Jones, Jr., 
J. S. Kneedler, 
Edw. H. Williamson, 

ROBT. EwiNG, 

Bichard C. Dale, 
H. H. Mears, 
Jno. B. Gest, 
Charles Brown, 

AViLLIAM PuRVES, 

• James S. Earle, 

Q. Campbell, 
John C. Clark, 
Saml. C. Perkins, 
Erskine Hazard, 
Abr. R. Perkins, 
F. L. Bodine, 



Philadelphia, Dec. 13, 1862. 
Gentlemen : — 

Your request for the Discourse delivered on the day of 
Thanksgiving, is a suflScient reason, whatever might be my own judgment 
in the case, for publishing it. As, however, from the great length of the 
Discourse, a considerable portion was omitted in the deliver}^, and, as it 
happened, that part of the Discourse concerning which there would be 
likely to be most diiference of opinion about the correctness of the views 
presented, it would be unjust to hold any persons responsible for the 
sentiments advanced^ but myself, and in yielding to your request, I desire 
that it may be understood that I alone am responsible for those sentiments. 
With this understanding — grateful that the address, as far as heard, so 
met your approval as to lead you to desire its publication, I yield it to you. 
Some of the views advanced may surprise my friends. Possibly on more 
mature reflection, I might see reason to change them : — possibly those to 
whom they might appear doubtful on their first suggestion, might on more 
reflection be led to regard them as true. 

With great respect, 

I am sincerely and truly yours, 

ALBERT BARNES. 
Messrs. Ambrose White, 
AVm. G. Crowell, 
Samuel H. Perkins, 
James Bayard, and others. 



DISCOURSE. 



There never lias been a time, in our own country, or 
in other countries, when, if a man had anything to say 
that could comfort, animate, or encourage his fellow- 
citizens, or had any claim derived from his age, his posi- 
tion, or his experience to impart counsel, it could be 
more appropriately done than now. Involved in a war 
such as has existed in no other nation ; with numerous 
enemies to the government in every part of the land ; 
with reverses that tend to humble us in our own eyes 
and before the world ; with comparatively little progress 
in the great objects of the war; with a demand on the 
resources of the loyal part of the nation that test to the 
utmost its ability and its patriotism ; when measures are 
adopted, most extreme in their nature, and that try to 
the extreme of endurance the loyalty of the people — 
measures submitted to as a temporary necessity, only 
because it is believed that there are greater interests that 
w^ould be imperilled if they were not adopted ; with no 
manifested sympathy among the nations of the earth, 
and with little real sympathy from any of those nations ; 
with the nations of the old world looking greedily for the 
entire breaking up of our institutions, and the overthrow 
of a free government, the result of so much sacrifice and 
toil, and the last hope of free institutions on the earth ; 
a contest in reference to which the people from whom we 
have sprung, whose language we speak, whose religion we 
have inherited, and whose blood flows in our veins, seem 



most of all to rejoice at the prospect of our utter dis- 
comfiture, rupture, and downfall; exulting in our disasters, 
taunting us for a want of military and civil power and 
skill, and, under a pretence of neutrality, really in alliance 
with those who have risen in arms to overthrow the 
government, and strangely sympathizing wdth an organ- 
ization based avowedly on the perpetual subjugation of 
one part of the race to the will of another, — under circum- 
stances such as these we meet to-day to enquire what 
there is to be thankful for; what there is to encourage 
hope; what there is to cheer in the prospect of the 
future ; what should be done — what can toe do for the 
afflicted land that we love. 

Without, I trust, any improper reference of a personal 
nature, I may be permitted to say that I have reached a 
period of life when a man ought to be able to make some 
suggestions of value in such a crisis as this; Avhen he ought 
to be able to say something that might be well founded in 
regard to the causes of such a state of things ; to the 
evils which have brought so great calamities upon the 
land ; to the remedies for those evils ; to what may reason- 
ably be hoped for in the future. I have^ at any rate, 
reached a period of life when I have little to hope or to 
fear from my fellow-men ; yet a period when a man, with 
any right feeling, is conscious of a stronger love for his 
country in proportion to the nearness of the time when he 
is soon to be withdrawn from it. In such circumstances, 
a man may venture on suggestions which would have been 
less proper at an earlier period of life — suggestions, per- 
haps, not put forward with as much boldness and confi- 
dence as the suggestions of earlier years, yet, if he has 
reflected at all aright, with a more comprehensive view of 
the great issues at stake, and with deeper solemnity. He 



who has little to hope for personally in this world; whose 
aspirations must be now so almost entirely in the Avorld 
which he is soon to enter, may still cherish a hope for 
his country, for the church, and for mankind, not the 
less intense because the great blessings of religion and 
liberty are hereafter to be enjoyed by others, not by him- 
self. 

I shall venture, therefore, on this occasion to make 
some suggestions which I trust may not be improper, and 
which I am sure will be well received so far as the inten- 
tion goes, in reference to what our country has been as 
one of the family of nations ; to the grounds of grateful 
feelings to-day ; and to what seems to me to be demanded 
for the restoration of peace. The suggestions will be 
loyal, but they will be free. In all my life I have 
defended freedom of speech, and fought many a battle 
for it. I have felt no restraint on that subject hitherto ; 
I feel none now. I believe that when freedom of speech 
shall be taken away, the last hope of the nation— the last 
remnant of liberty, will be gone. 

I believe that we have the best constitution, and the 
best mode of government in the world, and that it is the 
most wicked of all acts that man can do at home, and the 
most wicked of all things that nations can countenance 
abroad, to attempt to destroy that constitution, and to 
overthrow that government. And yet I believe that 
mistakes were made in framing that constitution, inevi- 
table, it may have been, in the circumstances, which time 
has developed, and which have culminated in this most 
wicked rebellion ; that there are evils contained in the 
constitution which it is possible still to remedy and re- 
move, and which must be remedied and removed, if the 
great purposes of the formation of the constitution shall 



8 

be carried out in a restored and permanent Union. Our 
fathers were not ignorant of the existence of those evils. 
They could not, or they supposed they could not, remove 
them. They hoped that time and wisdom, that the ex- 
perience and the patriotism of the nation, would remove 
them. Time, progress, ambition, selfishness, conflicting 
interests, have developed the evil; rebellion has shown 
to us its magnitude ; the desolations of war, the tens of 
thousands slain on battle-fields, the tens of thousands 
maimed for life, the tens of thousands of families bereaved, 
the tens of thousands of graves newly made, where sleep 
those who have been called forth in defence of their 
country, show how great was the evil, and call on the 
nation to arise and re-adjust our institutions in accord- 
ance with the eternal principles of righteousness. It may 
be that those evils could be removed only by the baptism 
of fire and of blood through which our nation is now 
passing. 

The past in our history is fixed, and so fixed that, in 
the main, coming times wnll not reproach us ; in such 
a way that foreign nations, however much they may 
now desire it, could not find occasion to exult over us. 
" The past," said Mr. Webster, in relation to a part 
of our country — to Massachusetts — '^ The past, at least, 
is secure. There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, 
and Bunker Hill, and there they will remain forever. 
The bones of her sons, falling in the great struggle for 
Independence, now lie mingled with the soil of every 
State, from New England to Georgia; and there they 
will lie forever."'^' So w^e ma}^ say, in similar respects, 
of our whole country ; of our whole history. There is 

'^ Speeches, vol. i, p. 407. 



Plymouth, there areYorktown,and Saratoga, and Trenton, 
and Princeton, and there they will remain forever. 

Thus, too, it is with the history of our fathers ; with the 
settlement of our country ; with the perils, the sacrifices, 
the self-denials, of those wdio came to this western world 
to found a new empire; to establish institutions that should 
be free. Foreign nations cannot now go back and re- 
proach us for what our fathers w^ere, nor for what they 
did. Reproach for those who drove them out, and who 
compelled them to leave their own land, then a land of 
oppression, there is enough of in history, and the judgment 
of the world on that subject is not to be reversed. The 
w^orld knows by heart the history of the men that came 
to this continent. It understands the reasons w^hy they 
came. It has learned the character of their principles, 
and the extent of their sufferings. It knows what they 
did, and that record is engraved as in eternal brass. 
England, with all that is bitter in her feelings now, can- 
not be suffered, and will not be suffered, to go back and 
change the judgment of mankind in regard to the reasons 
Vv'hy the Pilgrims left her shores, or what they did in 
penetrating the forests of the New World. No nation has 
ever had such a commencement of its history as ours : — 
so pure, so noble, so self-sacrificing, so comprehensive 
and far-reaching in the principles of the men who founded 
it. Not Egypt, nor Assyria, nor Babylon, nor Greece, 
nor Rome ; not among the ancients, nor among the 
moderns, has there been a beginning in respect to which 
there will be so much which the world in its better days 
will be glad to retain in its history ; one which it will be 
so unwilHng to " let die." 

The past is fixed too as we would desire it should 
be, in regard to the establishment of the Independence 



10 

of our country. It was not hasty; not rash; not ill- 
advised. It was not the result of passion ; nor did it 
spring from any ill-feeling toward the mother-country, or 
any desire of doing her wrong. It was a measure re- 
sorted to after a long series of oppressions and wTongs, 
and after appeal and remonstrance had proved to be 
vain. To the British Sovereign ; to the British Parlia- 
ment; to the British nation^ those appeals and remon- 
strances had been made long, and continued to be made 
till the last hope of their being effectual, even in the 
minds of those most reluctant to engage in war, had died 
away. 

And the war of Independence itself was such that the 
nation has no cause to look upon it with shame ; nor 
has history anything to record in regard to it to our re- 
proach. It was not, on our part, a war of barbarism ; it 
was not conducted by calling in the aid of the scalping- 
knife and the tomahawk ; it wvas not stained by bad faith, 
or by dishonorable deeds ; it was not conducted on prin- 
ciples that subject us to just reproach among the nations. 
No great revolution was ever conducted with so little to 
give pain or cause regret in the recollection; no war has 
been waged at any time in which there was so little to give 
just offence, or to shock the moral sense of mankind. 

The past is fixed, and fixed, in the main, as we should 
desire it to be, in regard to the organization of the 
government of the country as Independent. It was 
done in a peaceful manner ; it was done wdien the 
highest wdsdom of the nation was summoned to calm 
and deliberate investigation. Not a measure w\as adopted 
as the result of force or of fear ; not a provision was put 
into the constitution at the instigation of the bayonet. 
Never before in the history of the world was there assem- 



11 

bled such a body of men for the purpose of framing a 
constitution for the government of a great country, and 
never before has there been seen in our world a spectacle 
so sublime as pertaining to the origin of a nation, as 
when that constitution Avas submitted to the cahii judg- 
ment of a peoj)le then numbering three millions. In 
securing its adoption, not a vote was forced ; no man 
voted because he was afraid to vote otherwise ; no man 
voted because his vote had been bought. 

To the formation of that constitution, and to the con- 
stitution itself, we now look with gratitude, with pride, 
as the chief, the crow^n of the blessings which God has 
given to this land. To say that it has no defects, is 
what no American has ever been required to say; to say 
that it could not be made better, would be to deny the 
very principles of the constitution itself, for it has made 
provision for its own amendment. Our fathers were 
sagacious enough to see that there were evils existing 
which there was not then power to remove, but which it 
was hoped time and good feeling might remove ; they saw 
that among a people destined to grow and to spread over 
a vast extent of territory there might be provisions de- 
sirable which had not occurred to them ; they saw that 
in the unknown future, when a comparatively small 
population should be multiplied to hundreds of millions ; 
when a vast expanse of forest should be subdued, and 
become the abode of civihzed men; when rivers and 
lakes then unexplored even so as to give their course or 
outline on a map, should bear on their bosoms the pro- 
ductions of a teeming soil ; when the commerce of the 
infant nation might whiten every sea, and new relations 
might spring up with other nations of the earth, there 
mt^ht be occasion for change, and it Tfii^M be proper to 



12 

appeal to the Avisdom of the nation and examine the 
new state of things which would demand the change. 
The constitution, we may admit, was not perfect. But 
it was the noblest and the best that the world had seen. 
It has made us great. It has developed our resources. 
It has made us respected and feared wherever it was 
desirable that we should be respected and feared. It 
has created for us a navy; it has created a commerce; 
it has saved us from border wars; it has made the 
'Noith what it is, and the South what it is ; the great 
West what it is, and what neither could have been but 
for the constitution. 

The past is fixed in regard to our treatment of the 
nations of the old w^orld, and fixed in a manner which 
we have little to regret, and little that we might wish 
now to have changed. We have desired sincerely to be 
with all those nations, at peace. We have been disposed 
to make equal and just treaties with them in regard to com- 
merce. We have sought to take no improper advantage 
of them. We have been willing to visit with them every 
distant sea, and every distant port, and to share with 
them in the fair avails of commerce. We have impressed 
none of their seamen into our service. We have made 
no war on their peaceful pursuits. We have never 
intermeddled with their affairs, but have aimed to stand 
not merely professedly but really aloof from all the 
conflicts which they have waged among themselves; to 
maintain not a hollow and hypocritical, but a real neu- 
trality in regard to the wars, right or wrong, in which 
they have been engaged. We have seen them often 
waging what we regarded as unjust wars. We have 
seen them invading peaceful nations. We have seen 
them attempt to suppress insurrection and rebellion in 



13 

their own provinces by means that, as a christian and 
civilized people, we conld not but regard as barbarous 
and cruel — in a manner, that, in the language of the 
Earl of Chatham, when describing a measure which had 
been deliberately proposed in the House of Lords to be 
pursued in reference to the revolted colonies of America, 
" shocked us as lovers of honorable war, and as detesters 
of murderous barbarity." We have seen them binding 
men to the cannon's mouth, and sweeping them by scores 
into eternity. We have seen them, for the purpose of 
compelling a foreign nation to admit as an article of com- 
merce and of consumption, against their own just and 
humane laws, a drug most deleterious to the bodies and 
the souls of men — destructive to morals ; destructive to 
religion ; destructive to domestic peace ; destructive to 
national progress — waging a fearful, a bloody, and a 
horrid war, until the object was accomplished, and the 
ports of the greatest nation in the world w^ere compelled 
to be throw^n open to admit that, in commerce, w^hich 
w^ould spread w^o, and sorrow, and wretchedness every- 
where. We have not interfered. We have not even taken 
part with the oppressed and the w^ronged. We have 
not, in a public and national manner, uttered the language 
of remonstrance at such barbarities and atrocities. We 
did indeed interpose when Scio was laid waste by fire 
and sword, and her beautiful villas and gardens were 
smoking ruins ; when the oliveyards of the Peloponnesus 
were cut down, and the Turk had laid all waste ; when 
Greece, once the land of beauty and the home of civili- 
zation and art, was suffering all the ills of famine from 
the desolation of ruthless war — then w^e interfered by 
the noble resolution in Congress, and the noble speech of 
Mr. Webster, and by contributions, not of arms and im- 



14 

plements of death, but of food for the fjimishing, from 
churches, and villages, and private citizens, to relieve 
those sufferers. And when the s.cour£fe of famine and 
pestilence swept over Ireland, and England failed to 
supply the wants of the famishing, we did interfere — 
we hastened to relieve them : an act which Ireland 
has never forgotten, but which England has. Beyond 
things like these we have not ventured to interfere in 
the affairs of nations, remote or near ; and in regard to 
nations, we have at least the consciousness that in our 
treatment of them we have endeavored to carry out the 
great principles which we have designed to lay at the 
foundation of our own prosperity, that justice, and truth, 
and honesty are the best foundation of a nation's pro- 
gress, as they are of the welfare of an individual — that 
" righteousness exalteth a nation." That we are inno- 
cent in regard to all men — to those within our own bor- 
ders — the Indian, the African, we cannot indeed affirm ; 
to foreign nations our course has not been one of dis- 
honor and shame, and we are willing that it should be 
known and read by all men. 

In all these respects we look with special pleasure and 
approbation on our treatment of the land of our fathers. 
England has been dear to us. There are the graves of the 
ancestors of our Carvers, our Brewsters, our Hancocks, 
and our Adamses — of our Henrys, and our Pinckneys 
— of Washington. Its language is ours. Its religion is 
ours. Its history is ours. We delight to think that 
Milton, and Cowper, and Shakespeare, and Newton, and 
Bacon, are no more theirs than ours. We visit that land 
with emotions such as we can have toward no other land 
— save Palestine, and in Westminster Abbey we sit 
down and weep, for there we are surrounded by the 



15 

monuments, and tread on the graves of the ilhistrious 
dead whose names and works haA^e been familiar to us 
from our cradles. We have not been unwilling to bear 
much from England ; and to forget all the past, when we 
could show to her respect and affection. We welcomed 
the Heir apparent to her throne to our shores, and gave 
him an '' ovation" in the land, not forced and formal, but 
hearty and sincere, for the nation honored and respected 
the pure and virtuous character of her that bare him, 
and wished well to him and to the land where he would 
occupy the throne. 

The past is fixed, and fixed in the main as we would 
desire it should be, in regard to the manner in which the 
resources of this land have been developed ; to our growth 
and our greatness. That we have been proud of this ; 
that w^e have boasted of it ; that we have attributed it 
to ourselves ; that we have felt that w^e might defy the 
world ; that we have supposed that nothing could now 
retard our progress; and that, with all that there has 
been of greatness in that which was good, there has 
sprung up a rank and pestilential growth of evil corres- 
ponding in some measure with the magnitude of the good, 
w^e are not disposed to deny. 

But still, the nation has become great; greater than 
any other nation has ever become in the same period of 
time ; great, in the main, in the right direction. No other 
nation has ever advanced so rapidly, or developed such 
resources in the same period of time. Not Egypt ; not 
Assyria ; not Babylon ; not Persia under Cyrus and his 
successors ; not Greece ; not Home ; not Germany, Gaul, 
or Britain. Britain : — it w^as long and slow from the 
time of the Druids, from the time of Alfred, from the 
time of William the Red-haired, before the resources of 



16 

the little island were in any measure developed — more 
than a thousand years from the time of Alfred. We 
might have hoped that England would have looked on, 
with gratification, at the amazing development here of 
institutions and of power, derived in a great measure 
from herself, and among those who spoke her own 
language. For the development here was in the same 
li7ie as that which had made England, small in territory, 
great in wealth, in influence, and in power. It was a de- 
velopment in agricultural improvements, in schools, in 
colleges, in the comforts of life, in intelligence, in hberty,. 
in religion, in commerce, in labor-saving inventions. We 
had carried out in our ^mrposes all that we had derived 
of (/ood from the mother country; we had endeavored to 
avoid that which was evil in her example, and to prevent 
the ill consequences of what she had entailed upon us. 
All that had been good in her learning, her religion, her 
laws, her literature, her morals, her arts, we were 
endeavoring to make our own, and to spread them as 
rapidly as possible over the vast domain which God 
had put in our possession, and we have done it to an 
extent which the world has never before seen. The evil 
which there had been in the memory of former things, 
and the evil in her example, and the evil which she had 
entailed upon us, we were endeavoring to avoid and re- 
move. We had forgotten, as a people, the history of her 
persecutions — those persecutions which oppressed our 
ancestors, and which drove them out on the wide and 
stormy ocean in frail barks, to an uninhabited wilderness, 
and we were willing that those things should pass from 
our memory, and from the memory of mankind ; saying, 
in kindness to the people of the mother country, as 
Joseph did to his brethren, " As for you, ye thought 



evil against us, but God meant it unto good." Gen. 1. 20. 
We had seen evil in some of the institutions of the mother 
country, in her form of government, in her aristocracy, 
in her oppression of the poor, and we endeavored to 
avoid them, and to carry out, in free institutions, her 
own ideas of liberty. We did not inherit, perhaps partly 
from the necessity of the case, since God gave us, with- 
out a war of conquest, more territory than we know what 
to do with, her love of conquest, and w^e meant to live in 
peace with all the world. There was, indeed, and there 
is, one great evil which we had inherited, which has been 
our bane and the cause of all our trouble, which we had 
not, up to the war, been able to remove. Our fathers com- 
plained that England had forced it upon us. It was an 
original charge in the Declaration of Independence, that 
this had been forced upon the Colonies without their 
consent. England was more responsible for it than we 
w^ere. Those unhappy foreigners of a different skin had 
been conveyed here in British ships, and under British 
laws, and in the use of British capital, and for the pur- 
poses of British gain. The suppression of the trade was 
then demanded by no developed principle in the British 
constitution, and by no prevaiHng feeling of the British 
people. It was long, long after this, that the case of Somer- 
set occurred, in which it was determined that slavery 
in England was contrary to the British constitution, and 
the delivery of the opinion of Lord Mansfield in that case 
constituted an epoch in English history. But the evil 
was already entailed upon us, and the great principle 
which was thus, at a late period, announced in England, 
came too late to reach the evil which she had inaugurated 
in the Colonies, for then we were an independent people. 
Oh ! how^ happy had it been for us, for England, for 



18 

Africa, for the world, if Mansfield had lived a century 
earlier ; if a similar case had occurred then ; and if the 
great sentiment of liberty which went forth when he 
uttered that memorable opinion, had covered the colonies 
as well as the little parent isle — that sentence Avhich 
proclaimed that, " The air of England has long been too 
pure for a slave, and every man is free who breathes it. 
Every man who comes into England is entitled to the 
protection of English laws, whatever oppression he may 
heretofore have suffered, and whatever may be the color 
of his skin : — 

Quamvis ille niger, quamvis in candidus esses. '^^'' 

But the evil was fastened upon us. It had struck its 
roots deep. It threatened to fill the land. We have not 
been able to remove it, and when we failed from want of 
power, or want of will, or both, God took the matter into 
his own hands : — and on the throes, and conflicts, and 
stripes, and blood, and sacrifice, and sorrow, incident to 
it, England looks without sympathy, without any mani- 
fested regard for her own principles, apparently willing 
now that the curse which she entailed upon us shall 
rend our Eepublic, break down forever our free institu- 
tions, and bathe the land w^hich she has herself twice 
endeavored in vain to conquer, in oceans of blood. 

We may not boast. We have not been, and are not, 
as a nation, what we should be ; but we may say tvithoiit 
boasting, and in grateful language appropriate to this 
day, that the sun has yet to shine upon a land where 
there has been more public and private virtue; where 
there has been more domestic peace and tranquillity ; 
where there has been a wider influence of education ; 

* Lord Campbell's Lives of the Chief Justices of England, vol. ii. p. 231. 



19 

where the obligation of contracts has been more sacredly 
regarded ; where there is more respect to law as law ; 
where there is greater security of property or of personal 
rights ; Avhere there is^ on the whole, as much purity of 
religion ; where there is so much happiness springing 
from the virtues of domestic life. There has been, there 
isj no land where an unprotected female could travel so 
far, and meet with so much attention, and be so safe from 
rudenessc There is no land where so large a proportion 
of the population can read and keep accounts. There is 
no land where the laws can be so easily executed with- 
out the representatives and the insignia of military power. 
There is no land Avhere life and property are so safe. I 
passed, as thousands of others have done, and still do, 
the early years of my life in a quiet home, on Avhose 
doors and windows there never had been a lock, or bolt, 
or a fastening of any kind — not even a nail 3 and where a 
peaceful and industrious family lived for more than half 
a century, without fear, alarm, or peril. To what other 
land will men go — save it may be Switzerland, where 
scenes like these are common ? 

So much for the years that have gone by, and whose 
results have ceased to be our particular history, and have 
passed into the general history of the world. 

We meet to-day, especially, to recall the mercies of 
another year. It too is now passed, with all that it had 
for us of joy or sorrow, prosperity or adversity, peace or 
war, laughing or tears, sleep, rest, toil, trouble, anxiety, 
bereavement, gain, loss, public grief, or private sorrow. 
It has been such a year as our country has never ex- 
perienced before, and will make more w^ork for the calm 
and impartial historian of future times, than any one year 



20 

in all our public history. For there are sad things to 
be recorded which may not look as sad as they now do, 
when they are fairly recorded ; things to be explained, 
wdiich cannot now be explained ; reverses to be set in a 
true light, whose causes caniiot now be understood ; 
plans broken, defeated, or accomplished, not now under- 
stood, which are to have an important bearing on our 
future history, and whose bearings can only be seen in 
that future. There are men, w^ho, during this year have 
made their first appearance on the stage of human affairs, 
whose life, plans, and purposes may exert a most im- 
portant influence on the future history of the world ; 
men whose characters are not yet understood, and whose 
acts can be explained only in future times when the 
smoke and mist w^hich now envelop them shall pass away, 
and there shall be the return of a clear and unclouded 
sky: — for the land has not only been enveloped in the 
smoke and dust of battle, but the campaigns, the plans, 
the victories — why any, why not more ; the characters 
and purposes of many of the actors in these scenes, are 
as yet enveloped in smoke and dust like the battle-field. 
There have been reverses such as no nation with similar 
power and resources ever knew; and there have been great 
deeds which w^ill make the year memorable among all 
the years of our history. No man commends his own 
wisdom who pretends now to understand the events of 
this passing year. 

There have been scenes, indeed, which have filled the 
land with sorrow, for the central part of our land is 
almost one great hospital or graveyard, and desolation 
has marched over great tracts which were before the 
scene of quiet homes, and green fields, and orchards ; the 
peaceful places of churches and schools. If this were 



21 

a day for fasting, humiliation, and prayer, it would seem 
to be much easier to find topics appropriate for siich a 
day than for a day of thankfulness to God ; nor should 
^YQ forget this while w^e endeavor to find topics for devout 
acknowledgment of the divine goodness. " It is a good 
thing to give thanks unto the Lord," and man can always 
find, if he will, that for which his heart should rise in 
gratitude to his Maker. 

Personally, life, health, food, raiment, home, friends, 
social blessings ; the Providence which has kept us in the 
ways of virtue, honesty, and truth ; the advances which 
we may have made in knowledge ; the tranquil hours 
that we have spent; the support we have had in 
trouble; the blessings of salvation and the hope of heaven ; 
the fact that all along through the year God has been 
merciful to our unrighteousness, and has been wilHng to 
hear our prayers in all circumstances, and to save our 
souls, — all these and kindred things should rise up to 
remembrance as we recall the events of another year. 

Our land, too, even amidst the desolating scenes of 
w\ar, has yielded abundance. Half a million and more 
of men have been withdrawn from the peaceful pursuits 
of life, and have been in tents, or without tents, away 
from their homes ; and these too, in the main, composed 
of that class who do the hard work of the field, the 
ploughing, sowing, reaping, and gathering into barns; yet 
in our Northern States it does not appear that an acre 
less than usual has been cultivated, and never have the 
fields yielded a more abundant harvest ; never have the 
orchards been borne down with more abundant fruits ; 
never in our history has there been, strange as it may 
seem, a greater amount of exports of those things need- 
ful for life. 



99 



The year has been a year remarkable for health, for 
freedom fro 111 the raA'ages,eyen the local ravages of disease. 
Not as in other years have we been summoned to sympa- 
thize with portions of our country visited with pestilen- 
tial diseases, and to send or go, that those in attendance 
on the sick and the dying, might themselves become 
martyrs in the cause of kindness and charity. 

Our land, in schools, colleges, churches, seminaries 
of learning, is still a prosperous and a happy land. Those 
schools have not been broken up ; those colleges have 
not been disbanded — not even one closed by war ; those 
churches, though diminished in many cases in the num- 
bers sent and drawn for the field, are not closed ; those 
seminaries of learning, for the youths of either sex, for 
agriculture, for preparation in the studies of the profes- 
sions — law^, medicine, divinity, are scarcely even checked 
in the career of providing for the wants of the next 
generation. 

The nation, in all these things, in all that makes a 
nation prosperous, is prosperous even amidst these scenes 
of war, and there is not now on the face of the globe a 
land in passing through which a stranger would see 
everywhere so many evidences of domestic peace, of 
happy homes, of successful agriculture, of life, and 
energy, and activity, in the marts of business, or on the 
wharves of commerce, as in this land, even amidst all 
that is sad and desolating in war. 

We have been enabled to maintain peace with the 
world at large ; to secure the sympathy and kindness of 
some of them ; to check the outrages and wrongs of 
others ; to hold them at a distance when they threatened 
us ; to calm their rage by successful acts of diplomacy 
and by just explanations when they were ready to make 



2P) 

war upon us ; to prevent a recognition of the portion of 
our land engaged in this great rebellion^ even when the 
attempt has been made to show that every interest of 
foreigners, and all the concentrated hatred of our pros- 
perity and of our institutions, and all the long-cherished 
desire of our division and our ruin, demanded such a recog- 
nition. In future times it will be regarded as among the 
most memorable things in this year that the Independence 
of the Southern Confederacy w^as not recognized abroad, 
and that the affairs of our nation have been so wisel}^ 
conducted in this respect, that God could properly so in- 
terpose and stay the wrath and the desires of interest, 
and hatred, and of jealousy, as to prevent a recognition 
which might have severed our Union forever, and which 
iDould have involved us in conflicts with the powers of 
the old world, and perhaps have kindled a universal 
war. 

The power of the government to sustain itself, and the 
disposition of the nation to sustain it, have been evinced. 
If during the year, now closing, we have not done all 
that we hoped to do ; if there have been mistakes and 
errors in conducting the war \ if there have been sad 
and mortifying reverses, it is still true that the rebelhon 
has not been successful, and still apparent to ourselves 
and to the world that this government— this constitution 
— is settled on a foundation which no mere power of 
man can overthrow. Never in the history of the world 
has there been so formidable a rebellion as this, and 
never has there been a year which so much tried the 
strength of a government as this year has tried the 
strength of ours. Extraordinary measures have indeed 
been adopted — measures regarded by a part of the 
people, even of the friends of the administration, as 



24 

perilous to liberty, and not sanctioned by the constitu- 
tion ; and endured only because they were regarded as 
nccesmry for the time, and, therefore, in the willingness 
to submit to such measures eyen for a time, furnishing 
one of the strongest proofs of the true amount of patriot- 
ism in the hearts of the people; but none of these things 
has had power to change the settled purpose of the 
nation to maintain the Union and the Constitution, 
and to restore peace by any expenditure of treasure 
and of blood that may be necessary. On this point 
there is at present but one voice at the North ; and 
the formation of parties is not based on the question 
whether the war shall or shall not be prosecuted^ 
and whether the government shall or shall not be sus- 
tained. I consider this firm purpose to sustain the govern- 
ment ; to defend the country ; to place at the disposal of 
the government all the money, and all the men that may 
be necessary to sustain its operations by land and by sea, 
as one of the most remarkable events in the history of 
the world, and one of the best evidences of the freedom^ 
and at the same time of the vigor of the government. 
The year which is now closing may yet be regarded as 
among the most remarkable in the history of the world, 
as thus testing the power of a Republic, and answering 
the question so often asked with no friendly spirit 
abroad, whether Republican Institutions can be perma- 
nent; wdiether nations have the power of self-govern- 
ment. If this government can go through this war 
Avithout being overthrown, there is no earthly power 
that it will have reason to fear, at home or abroad. 
Foreign nations see this ; and with anxiety, and hatred, 
and hope, they are watching this struggle as decisive of 
what they have to fear in the working of their own insti- 



2') 

tutions, and what they may have to fear if they provoke 
a war hereafter with the American people. 

Perhaps most of all as adapted to shape the futnre 
history of our country, and to make this 3^ear remem- 
bered with gratitude by those who love the liberty of 
man, it may be regarded as most eventful in breaking 
the bonds of servitude, and removing the great evil — 
the cause of all our troubles. In the din and conflict of 
battle ; in the anxiety which all have felt in regard to 
the armies summoned from the people — the anxiety of 
fathers, and mothers, and wives, and brothers, and 
sisters, about those dear to them exposed to the perils 
of the camp ; in the w^ail of sorrow which has come up 
from all parts of the land ; in the records of victories 
and defeats, keeping the attention of the nation fixed 
most intensely on one object, there may have been 
scenes enacted which have scarcely attracted attention, 
which will go more deeply into the future welfare of the 
nation than any events which have occurred in former 
times, and which, now occurring almost without notice, 
could not have been secured before w^ithout the danger 
of a revolution. Twenty years ago it required all the 
talent, the eloquence, and the influence of John Quincy 
Adams, to dare to present to Congress a petition for the 
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, and a 
law^ to that effect then w^ould have involved the nation 
in a civil w^ar. This year it has been done ; and so 
quietly and calmly that the nation has been scarcely 
aware of it : and yet it is done ; it cannot be undone. 
The Territories — the vast Territories — of the nation, 
hereafter to be great States larger than many of the 
kingdoms of the old world, are free, and, as territories, 
they are to be free forever from the tread of the slave ; 



20 



from laws reducing men to chattels ; from laws which 
authorize the traffic in the bodies and souls of men : yet 
who almost is aware of it ? Who has heard a voice of 
thanksgiving for it ? Who has reverently paused in the 
din of arms, and the surges of war, to thank God for it? 
A blow has been given to the slave trade this year 
such as has never been struck before. It was indeed 
piracy by our laws, and by the laws of other nations ; 
but it was piracy on paper only. In our principal marts 
of commerce, and under the influence of men most 
prominent for station, and wealth, and enterprise, vessels 
were freely fitted out for this traffic, and the infamous 
men engaged in the traffic were allowed to go at large 
with impunity. It needed an example to show that any- 
thing was meant by our paper laws, and that we were 
not dealing falsely with mankind in proclaiming the 
traffic to be piracy; and it needed, and it found, one man 
wdio had firmness enough to carry out the principle, and to 
show what the nation understood by the term as apphed 
to that species of commerce, and at last one guilty man 
for this crime has suffered the just penalty of the law. 
A great movement, such as this nation has never before 
seen, has been suggested and recommended on the subject 
of emancipation. Never before has a suggestion on that 
subject been made by a President of the United States ; 
never before commended to Congress ; never before re- 
ceived the sanction of the Representatives of the people : 
and yet it was so wise, so calm, so free from any attempt 
at compulsion ; it so left it to the States themselves ; it 
offered such a fair compensation; it would have such 
ultimate influences if acted on, as, in the very form in 
which it was submitted, to constitute an epoch in the 
history of our country. It was an epoch in the history 



of England when a member of Parliament ventured to 
suggest the idea of Emancipation in the British colonies: 
it was much more wdien a President of the United 
States ventured to use the term, and to suggest the 
idea, as a practical one. And then this year will be 
still more remarkable for things not yet recorded; w^hose 
bearings are not yet seen ; w^hose influence on this sub- 
ject is to go ftiv into future times : things wdiich, what- 
ever may be the issue of the present conflict, will make 
new adjustments necessary. Slavery is not what it was ; 
it wall never be wdrat it was again. The Fugitive Slave 
Law is not wdiat it v;as; it can never be wdiat it was 
again. The slave all along the Border States is a differ- 
ent being from what he was ; is more of a man ; is less 
a '^chattel" and a '4hing;" is of less value as "property" 
than he Avas, or ever will be again. The power spring- 
ing from this source, which once, and so long, controlled 
the nation, is broken, and^ whatever may be the issue of 
this struggle, is not to be a controlling power again. 
Thousands, and tens of thousands, have tasted of free- 
dom w^ho never knew it before, and we begin to look on 
to times when the land shall be free. Could we now 
see what the future patriot will see ; could we see all 
the secret influences at w^ork this year for the good of 
the nation; could we see all those deep and broad streams 
of liberty and happiness w^hich will flow" out to future 
times to fertilize and bless the land and the world : no 
language which we can use now would be such as Avould 
properly express the praise due to God for wdiat may 
spring out of the events of this year. Our minds are 
indeed pensive and filled w-ith sadness. Our eyes 
"pour out tears unto God." But tbere is light beyond; 
and those who will live in the future, may see. even in 



28 

wh«at gives us sorrow now, reasons for adoration and 
praise in a land made more happy ; a land without our 
conflicts and troubles ; a land where man shall be every- 
where recognized and treated as a man ; a land that 
shall be truly free. 

The past is fixed ; and we should be grateful to-day. 
The future is to us now the great source of solicitude 
and anxiety. This dreadful war ! When will it end ? 
How^ will it end ? What good will be accomplished by 
it ? What compensation can there be for all this blood 
and treasure — for all these woes and sorrow^s ? What 
will be the condition of our country when it is ended ? 
Shall we be one, or two, or many ; a people with one 
government ; one constitution ; one purpose : or a broken 
people with no government, and no constitution ; a 
people destined to perpetual border wars, or a people, all 
our liberties gone, to be collected into one, if ever one 
again, under a military despotism ? We cannot but ask 
these questions Avith anxious hearts ; we cannot answer 
them ; w^e cannot find anything that will calm the mind 
but in the belief that there is a God, and that the God of 
our Fathers, having now, as he had in their troubled 
days, his own plans, can and will interpose as he did then. 
At his feet we are safe ; and at his feet we may be 
calm, and there, wdth humbled hearts, having learned 
great and valuable lessons in regard to our pride, and 
self-sufficiency, and dependence, it is his manifest purpose 
to bring us. When we are actually brought there, with 
right feelings, then, and not till then, may we " look up," 
for then we may feel that " the day of our redemption 
draweth nigh." 

But can we see nothing now- to inspire hope ? Can we 



29 

see nothing that may be changed for the better by the 
war ? Can we see no evils in the past that this fearful 
struggle is likely to correct? Can we not see what 
tvould conduce to permanent peace, and what would pre- 
vent a recurrence in future times of such fearful and 
bloody conflicts ? Valuable above what our fathers left 
us, rich as was that inheritance, will be the legacy which 
we of this generation shall leave to after times, if we can 
leave a government, a constitution, where the causes of 
collision will be removed, and those evils Avhich have 
been culminating for eighty years will exist no more. 

There will be peace. This war, among apeople of the 
same language, the same religion, the same interests, 
will not last always ; will not last long. All men must 
see that it must come to an end ; all see that it must 
come to an end at no distant period. 

There will be great results that will come out of the 
war. It is indeed true that war not always, perhaps 
rarely, affects the great points immediately at issue ; but 
it is also true that there are other results invaluable to 
mankind that spring indirectly out of war. There are 
few great principles of liberty in our institutions, or in 
the world, whose establishment has not been effected as 
the result of bloody wars : principles that are worth to 
mankind all which they have cost ; whose influence in 
promoting the happiness of the world is more than a 
compensation for all the treasure and blood expended — 
as the blessings of Christianity are more than an equiva- 
lent to mankind for all the toils of apostles, and the 
sufferings of martyrs. 

But can any one suggest now Avhat would be the con- 
ditions of a permanent peace ; what would remove 
forever the causes of war and alienation ; what would be 



30 

equal justice to all, to the North and the South; to 
humanity ; to the world ? May we venture to suggest, 
to what point things are tending ; can any one venture 
to paint and describe some of the "shadows" which 
coming events are forming, and of which the outlines may 
begin to be apparent ? 

It cannot be the recognition of the Southern Con- 
federacy. In such a recognition, under any form, and 
with any conceivable arrangement, there must remain the 
occasions for war, for constantly recurring appeals to 
arms. Apart from the principle, the asserted right of 
Secession which this would involve, and which might be 
as proper in any other case as the present; apart from 
the public recognition as right of all the treason in high 
places, the robbery, and the wrongs done to the nation's 
property and the nation's honor, there would be things 
which could never be adjusted to the idea of peace and 
concord. With fifteen hundred or tw^o thousand miles of 
coterminous territory, requiring vigilance at every mile 
in collecting the revenues, and everywhere furnishing 
occasions of collision ; with different Adews of trade and 
commerce ; with great rivers flowing across any possible 
boundaries, and whose navigation would be necessary for 
the prosperity of either portion ; with the different insti- 
tutions of freedom and slavery coming constantly into 
collision; with no common regulations in regard to com- 
merce and trade; with no united strength as presented 
to the nations abroad ; Avith no national credit ; with no 
national navy; with no national name, there could not 
be arrangements for permanent peace. 

It is equally clear that there cannot be permanent 
peace under the arrangements which have existed here- 
tofore ; even those which have been admitted into the 



31 

constitution. The same causes would again produce the 
same effects. This war is not accidental. It is not a 
sudden outbreak. It is not the result of individual 
ambition. There are things in the frame of the govern- 
ment wdiich have tended, under existing circumstances, 
to produce it, and which would produce it again. There 
are evils wdiose growth could not be checked by any pro- 
visions in the constitution ; evils wdiich mere time could 
not remedy. No man is bound by any proper principles 
of loyalty to say that the constitution is perfect; no man 
exposes himself to any just charge of disloyalty to say 
that it might be amended to advantage ; no man is now 
in the interest of the rebellion wdio ventures to say that 
the amended Constitution of the " Southern Confederacy" 
has provisions which it would be well to introduce into 
the General Constitution of the Union. 

It is not strange that in an instrument like that 
of the Constitution of the United States, a re-adjustment 
might be demanded. Our fathers, as already remarked, 
wise as they w^ere, saw this, admitted it, made provision 
for it. But few^ years passed away, as 3^et without any 
painful collision, but anticipating such a possible collision, 
wdien it was found necessary to apply the principle, and 
at no period has it been regarded as showing any disre- 
spect to that immortal instrument, to suggest that it 
might be amended. After eighty years in which its 
practical w^orkings have been seen; after the Avonders 
which have been wrought under it ; after all the proofs 
of amazing wdsdom in its general structure and provisions ; 
after all that it has done to give us a place among the 
nations of the earth ; and after the experience of the 
evils which have resulted from a few of its provisions, as 
now developed in scenes of dreadful carnage and blood. 



32 

assuredly there should be wisdom and patriotism enough 
in the North and the South to attempt a re-adjustment; 
to secure the just rights of all ; to remove, forever, if 
possible, the causes of collision and war. 

What would such arrangements be ? May a man, not 
a politician ; not a statesman ; devoted from early years 
to other pursuits ; having no claims to be heard beyond 
that small circle whom his official position entitles him 
to address, or whose ear he may have gained by a life 
spent in the honest desire to do good to mankind; yet a 
man who, in humble imitation of the great statesman, 
would desire that "when his eyes shall be turned to be- 
hold, for the last time, the sun in heaven, he may not see 
him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a 
once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, 
belligerent ; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched 
in fraternal blood," — may such a man, in his place, suggest 
what would seem to him to be demanded as the condi- 
tions and terms of abiding peace ? 

The first great principle in the return of peace, must 
be the suppression of this rebellion as rebellion. It must 
be founded on the laying down of hostile arms by those 
who have made war on the flag of the nation ; the restor- 
ation of forts and arsenals, and public property, seized 
by force or fraud; the recognition of the laws of the 
Union ; the abandonment of the whole principle in regard 
to the right of Secession. In all cases of rebellion, there 
must be a submission to just authority before there can 
be proposals and conditions of peace. God treats with 
men in rebellion only when they submit to authority and 
law ; and a government that recognizes a conspiracy and 
a rebellion, and which treats wdth it as such, is already 
at an end. The throne of God would have long since 



crumbled to atoms, and the universe would have long 
since been chaotic and anarchical, if any other principle 
had been recognized in the divine administration than 
that of submission to the just and equal laws of heaven. 
The welfare of the nation ; its name, its power, its credit, 
its influence, and the happiness of innumerable millions 
on this continent, all demand that this great principle 
shall be settled now and forever, that there is a " Govern- 
ment" here ; that it is a government in the highest sense 
of the term; that under that government, and in its proper 
operation, it has poiver to enforce its own laws, and to 
extend its control, under constitutional limits, all over 
the land. The immediate question now is, whether that 
can be done ; the solution of that question is to determine 
the destiny of this nation for all coming time. The duty 
now, the immediate duty, the sole duty, is to suppress 
this rebellion, and to establish the authority of law ; to 
maintain the Union. That, and that only, is the purpose 
of the war. That, and that only, makes the war right. 
That, and that only, will make its issues safe. Any thing 
else; even any scheme of benevolence; any measure 
based on the intrinsic wrong of slavery; any thing 
that contemplates the amelioration of the condition 
of any portion of the population ; any act of justice to the 
oppressed and the wronged as such ; any redressing of 
old grievances, or any rendering of tardy justice long 
delayed ; any proposed amendments of the constitution 
as a basis or a promised pledge, valuable as they might 
be in themselves, and incidental as they may be in the 
prosecution of the war, would be aside from its design ; 
would be a violation of the constitution ; would properly 
subject an Executive to impeachment. There is one 
object before the nation now, and but one : those rebel- 



34 

lious men must be .beaten on the battle-field ; those forts 
and arsenals mnst be restored ; those custom-houses must 
be put again under the control of the nation ; those 
armies must be dispersed ; those new laws, which are not 
laws, of the " Confederacy," must be abrogated ; the 
honored old flag must float again over every part of the 
land, before there can be permanent peace. " No other 
measure than this will preserve the integrity, the dignity, 
and the glory of this government. No other measure 
will prove to the world that we are what we profess to 
be — A NATION. No other will settle this controversy on 
a lasting basis." Failing here, Ave fail altogether, and 
the cherished hopes of our fathers will have vanished 
forever ; and the exultation of those, who beyond the 
seas hate liberty, and us as the representatives of 
liberty, will be complete. 

The second thing is the preservation of the Union. 
Men talk traitorously when they speak with complacency of 
the breaking up of this Union. The old thirteen States, 
under the articles of the Confederation, and before the 
Federal Union was formed, found themselves unable to 
carry on the operations of a government. They had no 
government, no army, no navy, no credit, no power. 
The Southern Confederacy would have no power now, 
were it not for the pressure of the war which keeps them 
together. It is the Union wdiich has made us, and which 
has kept us. We must be one great nation, or twenty 
or more divided, and separate, and jarring, feeble powders. 
We must be one in respect to war, and peace, and com- 
merce, and trade, and credit ; we must be one in view of 
ourselves, one in view of the w^orld. Besides, who would 
be authorized to propose peace on any other terms or 
conditions than the preservation of the Union ? Who has 



35 



been chosen by the people for any such purpose ? Who, 
under the constitution, has any such authority ? Within 
the proper limits of whose oath of office would it come 
that he should propose or listen to a separation of this 
Union ? What officer in the nation could do this with- 
out a usurpation of power never conceded to him, and 
fatal to liberty ? 

The third thing essential to permanent peace must be 
the entire suj^pression of the slave-trade. Whatever 
may be true. in regard to the moral character of the 
traffic, it is clear, that in this age of the world, and in 
the condition of the public opinion in the great mass of 
the people of this nation, peace and harmony could not 
exist if this traffic were re-opened and continued in 
any part of the nation. The intrinsic wrong of the traffic, 
as it appears to one part of the nation, bringing the power 
of conscience against it, and the supposed interest of the 
other part of the nation, urging its continuance, must 
produce a renewal of the conflict, and to secure per- 
manent peace, it must be in fact abandoned forever. 
This has been, is, and must be, the settled purpose of 
the nation before the world. This was the settled pur- 
pose of those who framed the constitution when they 
incorporated a provision that this should not be done 
before a certain period — the year 1808 — implying that 
it might be done, and should be done then ; this is the 
avowed principle, whether sincere or otherwise, of the 
so-called " Confederacy ;" this is now the settled pur- 
pose of the Government of the United States, declared 
not only in laws, but in the execution of a guilty man 
engaged in that horrid traffic. And this must be. The 
age demands it. Humanity demands it. The Bible 
demands it. The best interests of the nation demand it. 



36 

Oar standing among the nations of the earth requires it. 
The common character of the nation ; the common wel- 
fare of the community ; justice, mercy, religion, all 
demand that human flesh, among all nations, shall be 
separated from all those things which pertain to lawful 
commerce, and the traffic in it branded as the worst form 
of piracy. As the world would be shocked, and the 
nations would feel that they had a right to interfere, 
should either France, or England, or Portugal, or Spain, 
engage in piracy, or countenance or protect it by law; so, 
with equal right, might the nations of the earth interfere 
should any one of those engage in the slave-trade. The 
prohibition of this traffic could not, therefore, be complained 
of in any part of our country as a sectional, and partial, 
and unequal arrangement, for it lies back of any sectional 
and local bearing, as that which pertains to justice, to 
morality, to humanity ; to every ground of a claim to a 
name and place among the nations of the earth. There 
are eternal principles of right, and they are becoming 
incorporated, slowly it may be, but certainly, into the 
code of the laws which are to regulate nations ; and as 
it would not be partial, sectional, or unjust, if a portion 
of Northern citizens should desire to engage in acts of 
piracy, and should regard it as for their interest to be 
permitted to fit out piratical vessels from their ports, if 
they Avere prohibited by national laws on the ground of 
justice, humanity, the law of God, and the common 
good, so it is not, and would not be a sectional act, or 
a partial act, to prohibit the slave-trade to each and every 
part of the nation. For any new adjustment of the 
constitution this should be adopted as a settled princi- 
ple, proclaiming now before the world, not only that 
Congress ma^ pass laws prohibiting the traffic in human 



37 

flesh, but that the trade shall be forever abolished, and 
that no laws favoring it shall ever be enacted in the 
United States. 

A fourth thing, now shown, by the terrible war into 
which we are plunged, to be essential to permanent peace, 
and demanded ahke by the best interests of the North 
and the South, and by everj/ principle of just government, 
is the entire separation of the General Government from 
slavery. This, I regard, as the great principle necessary 
in the restoration of peace ; the great principle on which the 
constitution, if ever amended, is to be amended, and on 
which, if ever, the liberties of our country are to be 
preserved. Except in the matter just referred to, of 
prohibiting the slave-trade, the principle should be made 
universal that the General Government should have no 
relation to slavery; should in no wise protect it; 
should in no manner interfere with it to abolish it; 
should derive no benefit from it; should lend it no 
support ; should in all respects, and at all times, stand 
wholly aloof from it. The South demands this in 
words, at least; the North should yield it; the nation — 
the world — humanity — justice — national honor — religion 
— should insist on it forever. 

The great evil in this nation, the source of all our 
national woes, consisted in incorporating with the consti- 
tution any provisions whatever, save in the matter per- 
taining to the slave-trade, in relation to slavery. This 
principle, in my judgment, is so important — so vital to 
permanent peace ; so demanded by every sentiment of 
national honor and justice, that I may be permitted to 
dwell on it for a moment. 

There are three provisions now in the constitution ex- 
pressed or assumed, on this subject, w^iich lie at the foun- 
dation of all our difficulties ; which are unjust to the 



S8 

North and to the South ; which are in violation of all 
the principles of humanity — of what is due to man as 
man ; which are the source of endless contentions and 
strifes ; which originated this dreadful war ; which go 
far to explain the anomalous and strange position of 
foreign nations towards us : — provisions which stir up all 
that there is of interest on the one side, of con- 
science on the other, and of hatred on both, and which 
bring us as a nation into constant collision with the 
law, the government, and the Providence of God, 

Those provisions are: 1. That slaves, considered 
mainly as property, shall constitute a basis of represen- 
tation in Congress, in the proportion of three-fifths of 
their number; 2. That the power of the General 
Government shall be employed in restoring fugitives 
from slavery; and, 3. That Congress has the power, and 
the right, to prohibit slavery in the Territories of the 
nation. . This latter is an implied or assumed claim. A 
remark or two on each of these, will explain more 
particularly what I mean. 

] . For the first of these : That the African race, 
held in slavery, shall be represented in Congress in the 
proportion of three-fifths of their number. This is not, 
indeed, a direct representation of the African race them- 
selves, for in the constitution they are not so far regarded 
as persons as to have the rights of citizens, and of course 
any right to be represented in Congress. The repre- 
sentation is based on the idea of property/ ; to wit, that 
they are property, and that as property, there may be 
an additional representation in Congress from the 
Slave States.* This was one of the '^compromises' of 

* " It is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes 
into subjects of property, that a place is assigned tbem in the computation of 
numbers ; and it is admitted, that if the laws were to restore the rights which 



39 

the constitution, and the essential idea was, that, in 
order to secure something like a just balance het\Neen the 
North and the South, persons onl}^ should be the basis of 
•representation in the North; persons and property, to 
wit, property in slaves, should be the basis of represen- 
tation in the South."'-' This, according to the ratio of 
representation now in congress, would giA^e to the South, 
on the basis of property/ about twenty additional members 
in Congress. If the property idea, so unjust, were laid 
out of view ; if those of African descent at the South 
were treated as they are at the North, and as on every 
just principle they should be ; if the same principle were 
adopted in the Slave States as in the Free States, that, in 
the words of the constitution, "Representatives shall be 
apportioned among the several States which may be in- 
cluded in this Union, according to their respective niimhers ;" 
if all who are held in slavery were treated in this respect 
as persons and not as property, then the South would be 
entitled to an additional representation in Congress, in 
proportion to the two-fifths of all who are now held 

have been taken aicay, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share 
of representation with the other inhabitants." 3Ir. Madison, in the Federalist, 
No. LIV. 

* " In settling the ratio of representation, another difficulty arose respecting 
the slaves, who form so large a portion of the inhabitants of some of the 
States. To compute them among the number represented, would be giving them 
an importance to which their character did not entitle them ; * * * * 
to omit them altogether, in the computation, would be to reduce the influence of 
the Southern States, in a manner to which they would never consent. As a 
medium between these, it was agreed that five slaves should be accounted as 
three citizens, in arranging the representation, and the apportionment computed 
accordingly. To counterbalance, in some degree, this concession to the 
Southern States, direct taxes are to be apportioned by the same rule as repre- 
sentation; so that the same cause which increases their influence in the 
national Legislature, subjects them to the necessity of making larger contribu- 
tions to the national treasury, when that mode of taxation is resorted to." 
Bayard on the Constitution of the United States, pp. 49, 50. 



40 

in bondage, and in no way represented in Congress. On 
every principle of justice and equity this should be 
done, and this is undoubtedly a case, and so far as I can 
see, the only case in which a palpable vjrong has been' 
done to the South in the constitution. Of this, however, 
they have not complained, and could not complain, with- 
out renouncing what they regard as essential in their 
Institution, the right of propert?/ in men. 

2. The second of the provisions in the constitution in 
regard to the relation of the General Government to 
slavery, to which I have referred, is that by which 
fugitives from slavery are to be restored to their masters. 
The article in itself, as originally adopted, and as it 
stands in the constitution, is merely that " No person 
held to service or labor in one State under the laws 
thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of 
any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such 
service or labor ; but shall be delivered up on claim of 
the party to whom such service or labor is due :" — that is, 
that their return or restoration shall not be prevented or 
hindered by any laws in the respective States on the 
subject; or, in other words, that the masters shall have 
the power and the right to reclaim them, without any 
interference on the part of another State to prevent it ; 
of course always implying that the claim shall be fairly 
made out. This simple provision, bad enough in itself, 
has been perverted and abused by being made the foun- 
dation of the most odious and iniquitous law perhaps 
ever enacted in any christian country, by which the 
whole power of the General Government is pledged to 
the return of such fugitives ; by which it is made the 
duty of every man to render aid in such a return ; by 
which fine and imprisonment may be the penalty in any 



41 

case of refusing to render such aid, or for assisting a 
fellow-man to escape from bondage, and to become a 
freeman : — that is, for refusing, in a christian country, to 
violate what he may conscientiously believe to be an 
explicit law of God on the subject, " Thou shalt not 
deliver unto his master the servant w^hich is escaped 
from his master unto thee."* This law has been, indeed, 
pronounced on high authority — the highest in the land — 
to be constitutional; that is, not in fact a violation of the 
constitution, but still, it has never been shown that a 
milder law embracing all that was fairly implied in the 
constitutional provision, would not also be constitutional ; 
in other words, that a law might not have been so framed 
that, while it maintained all that is required by the letter of 
the constitution, it would not have required free citizens 
to do what would be a violation of their consciences, a law 
w^hich would have been less palpably a violation of the 
law of God. More than any other one enactment — 
more than any other one cause — this law, in the form in 
which it exists, has been the cause of the alienation of 
the North from the South. 

3. The other form of jurisdiction of the General 
Government on the subject of slavery, is the power 
claimed for Congress, and exercised by Congress, of 
excluding slavery by law from the Territories of the 
nation. This power, not expressly granted in the con- 
stitution, and not necessarily implied in the general pro- 
vision that " The Congress shall have power to dispose of, 
and make all needful rules and regulations respecting the 
Territory or other property belonging to the United 
States," (Art. IV. Section iii. 2,) has been claimed at the 

* Deut. xxiii. 15. So, also, Isa. xvi. 4 : " Let mine outcasts dwell with thee ; 
be thou a covert to them from the face of the spoiler." 



42 

North; has been denied at the South; was exercised by 
Congress, with scarcely a dissenting voice, in the case of 
the Territory North-West of the Ohio ceded by Virginia ; 
was implied in the Missouri compromise ; and was 
among the immediate causes of the trouble which led to 
this unhappy war. And yet, notwithstanding all these 
acts and decisions of so high authority, it ma?/ yet 
appear that it is a power which Congress never had ; 
which it was never contemplated that it should have 
under the constitution; and which is fundamentally 
erroneous in regard to all just principles of legislation. 
The power to prohibit slavery may imply the power to 
ordain or establish it ; and if Congress has this power in 
one respect, it Avould be difficult to show why it has it not 
in the other. Slavery is, in all cases, the mere creation 
of the laws : the laws of war; the laws of rapine; the laws 
of crime ; the laws of complexion or race — or laws 
founded on those things. It does not exist by nature. 
It is not founded on any natural rights. It does not 
go anywhere by any natural right, or by any natural 
law. It is always the creation of law — of local or 
municipal law; and in all places where it is not ordained^ 
or made such by law^ man is and should be free. Such 
are now understood to be settled and admitted princi- 
ples ; and as in the " Territories" Congress alone has 
power to make laws, or to " legislate," and as Congress 
has no power to make men slaves, or to institute slavery, 
so it follows that all the inhabitants of the Territories 
are free as long as they remain Territories ; free, that is, 
until the people acting for themselves shall ordain other- 
wise. The right to ^;roA/^zV slavery must go with the 
power to enact or ordain it ; and Congress has neither. 
It is for the people alone to determine this ; but whether 



43 

tvheii so determined any new State shall be admitted into 
the Union is another qnestion. If so admitted, the 
matter is, and shonld be with them alone. 

These are the provisions in the constitution, expressed 
or implied; provisions claimed, denied, perverted, abused, 
wdiich have been the source of all our national woes. 

But Avhat is the effect of these provisions in the con- 
stitution? What is there that should make it desirable 
that they should be changed? 

The first of these questions now claims attention. 
The other will be answered in the other specifications 
wdiich I have yet to suggest. 

The effects are obvious: — the evils are palpable, at 
home; abroad. 

At home. Eecognizing, as the constitution is supposed 
to do, the right of the General Government to interfere 
in the matter at all; the fact that slavery as property is 
represented in the General Government; the right and 
the duty of the General Government to employ its power, 
civil, miUtary, and naval, if necessary, in restoring fugi- 
tive slaves; the right of the General Government to 
legislate on the subject of slavery in the Territories, the 
effects are obvious. The constitution seems to be the 
defender of slavery. The South is clamorous for the 
interposition of that power in its behalf. It is jealous, 
and properly so, of any measures that would divide, 
abridge, or diminish the exercise of the power of the 
General Government in defending, extending, and per- 
petuating the Institution. It claims, and fairly too, that 
the power of the nation, as expressly prescribed, shall 
be exerted to the full extent conceded in the constitu- 
tion; it demands that all that is vague and undefined 
shall be determined in a manner not against the 
interests of the Slave Power. 



44 

The North, too, feels, and justly, that under this 
arrangement of the constitution, it has interests and 
responsibilities of a most grave and momentous character 
in the matter. It is not so much the interest of the 
tariff, of commerce, and of manufactures — of cotton, to- 
bacco, and sucrar — it is the interest springing from con- 
science and from national responsibility. Just so far as 
the subject pertains to the National Grovernment, and just 
so far as the North constitutes a part of the nation, so far, 
under the constitution, the North lias an interest in it; so 
far it has a right to discuss it; so far it has a right to pre- 
vent any aggressions which the slave power might make ; 
so far it has a right, in common with the other portions of 
the country, to deal with it, under the limits of the 
constitution, as it has to deal with the army and the 
navy — with the public lands, the Postal arrangements, 
and the Customs. It is not a meddlesome interference 
with "domestic" institutions; with what does not per- 
tain to us, when, as far as it is recognized and sustained 
by the National Government, it becomes a subject for 
examination and discussion. We interfere with no man's 
rights; we invade no man's prerogatives; we do nothing 
in violation of any rights of States, when, as long, and 
as far as it is a National Institution, or is sustained by 
the National Government, we examine freely the whole 
subject of slavery. And so long as the arrangement 
exists; so long as it is incorporated into the National 
Constitution, there will be two great parties — the one 
uniting with the South, and from pretended or real love 
of the constitution, or of the love of power, urging the 
demands of slavery; the other based on opposition to 
the idea that the National Government is to be governed 
by slavery, to submit to its control and demands, to ex- 
tend it, or to do anything to perpetuate it — a party 



45 

always necessarily advancing toward the idea that the 
National Government has the power to abolish it, and 
should do it. To a large part of a free people also, and 
especially a people in any degree under the dominion of 
conscience, it is a source of constant irritation that by a 
fair interpretation of their own acts in legislation, and 
by arrangements which are claimed to exist in the very 
constitution, they are compelled to approve of measures 
which go to sustain an institution which they regard as 
a direct violation of all the principles of humanity, and 
of the law of God. 

Abroad. It is not to be wondered at that our institu- 
tions have never been well understood abroad. To say 
nothing of a very prevailing ignorance in the older 
nations of Europe on all subjects, these institutions are, 
in some respects, so complicated; they seem, in the rela- 
tions of the General Government and the several States, 
to come so much into colhsion; they are so unhke all 
which exists in the Old World, that we are not to 
wonder at the fact that they are not understood. Espe- 
cially is this true in regard to slavery. That many of 
the people of foreign lands have great pleasure in malign- 
ing and misrepresenting us, and in hailing any indication 
of the downfall of the Republic, is undoubtedly true; 
and that much that is said on our position now, and 
much of the sympathy shown for the South, by those 
who have claimed to be pre-eminently the friends of 
liberty and the enemies of slavery, proceeds from this 
cause, no one will venture to deny. 

But there are honest minds abroad, and there may be 
minds there not inimical to our country, and which are in 
fact drawn toward us by the strong ties of consanguinity 
and religion, which are filled with deep perplexity on the 



46 

subject, and with the deeper perplexity because they 
are opposed to slavery, and because they sincerely desire 
to see the great principles of the British constitution 
as expounded by Lord Mansfield, and as acted out in the 
emancipation secured by Clarkson and Wilberforce, ex- 
tended over the world. On the one hand, they see, or 
think they see, that the constitution of this country is 
pledged to the support of slavery ; they see that slavery 
is recognized in the representation in Congress ; they 
see such protection in the Fugitive Slave Law ; they 
think they see it in the Dred Scott Decision ; they see 
it, or think they see it, even in the President's Proclama- 
tion ; they see it, or think they see it, in the purposes of 
one of the great political parties of the nation now rising 
again into power; and they think they see that the 
triumph of the national arms — the suppression of the 
Rebellion — the restoration of the Union as it tvas, will 
carry with it all those arrangements by which the power 
of the nation was pledged to the defence of the institu- 
tion. On the other hand, they think they see in the 
success of the Confederate Government, as circumstances 
must and will exist, the prospect of the speedy destruc- 
tion of the system. "Well as they know — for they cannot 
but know — the avowed principle on which that Confede- 
racy is founded — slavery — avowed slavery — yet they 
see, or think they see, that, hemmed in as it would be ; 
surrounded on every side by free States ; with no power 
to reclaim fugitive slaves ; with a border of some two 
thousand miles with nothing but imaginary lines, or creeks 
and rivers easily crossed, there could be no security for 
slavery ; that the value of a slave on that border would 
soon diminish to nothing; that there is no such attach- 
ment to slavery among slaves themselves as to keep them 



from availing themselves of the facilities of freedom ; and 
that slavery must^ therefore, soon come to an end. On the 
one hand, they see, or think they see, nothing but that 
which aims at its perpetuity ; on the other, while they see 
that it is the avoiued purpose to sustain it, they imagine 
that they see that which in the nature of things must at 
no distant period lead to its abolition/-' I confess that it 
seems to me that an intelligent foreigner — a true friend of 
human freedom — migJit be much perplexed on this sub- 
ject; and that, with all that is justly to be said and la- 
mented in regard to the bad spirit manifested abroad, it 
is possible for a true lover of our country, in its best inte- 
• rests, to look enquiringly, if not favorably, on the efforts 
of the Southern Confederacy, because he might suppose 
that he saw in that the only hope of the speedy removal 
of that great curse from our land, and from the Avorld. 

However this may be, and however the expression of 
this thought as coming from this pulpit may be received 
and regarded, jQi there is — there can be no doubt of the 
fact that the complicity of the National Government with 
slavery may be. and is, one great cause among good men 
abroad of the want of sympathy in the efforts of the 
National Government to put down this dreadful rebellion. 
We shall stand upright before the world; we shall meet 
the demands of human nature in this age ; we shall secure 

* "We would ask what has maintaiued, unmitigated, the horrors of slavery 
in spite of the public opinion of the world? The protection of the North." 
Edinburgh Revieio, October, 1862, pp. 281, 282, 

" We are convinced that the chances of mitigating and abolishing slavery 
in the Southern States will, if those States succeed in establishing themselves 
as a separate federation, be greater than such chances are if their conquest is 
effected by the arms of the North."' — Ibid. p. 284. 

"We cannot desire to see the Union re-established as a mighty power for 
maintaining slavery as one of its institutions within, and protecting it against 
all the nations of the world without." — Ibid. p. 285. 



48 

the entire sympathy of the lovers of freedom every 
where ; I may say that we shall secure the perfect sym- 
pathy towards us of Eussia;, France, Germany, England, 
Scotland, Ireland, Italy too — yea, Austria it may be, only 
when with the clear note of freedom, with a manly and dis- 
tinct tone, with an unambiguous utterance of the national 
conviction, and not as a mere military necessity, we shall 
repeat again before the world our solemn declaration, that 
"all men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among these 
are life, liberty^ and the pursuit of happiness" — when we 
shall proclaim that the National Government is separated 
from slavery ; that slavery is not represented in it as 
property ; that the civil tribunals of the nation, its mar- 
shals, its military and naval forces, are not to be em- 
ployed in arresting fugitives from bondage ; that citizens, 
free themselves, are not to be subjected to imprisonment 
or fines for declining to aid in returning human beings, 
guiltless of crime, to chains ; when we shall announce to 
mankind, with no uncertain sound, our belief as a nation 
that " God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell 
on all the face of the earth;" that all have been redeemed 
by the same sacrifice on the cross \ that every human 
being who has no other crime than that of "having a skin 
not colored like that of other men" is entitled to liberty. 
A fifth principle demanded by justice, and necessary for 
the permanent peace of the nation, is, that representation 
in the National Government shall be uniformly at the 
North and the South on the basis of population and not of 
property. It is now wholly so at the North; it is partly so 
at the South. At the North, all, of all colors and conditions, 
except "Indians not taxed," constitute the basis in the 
apportionment of members in Congress. At the South, 



49 

as we have seen, all white persons, and three-fifths of all 
held as slaves, are the basis. Those three-fifths, more- 
over, are represented not as persons, but as inoperty. 
Two-fifths of the four millions of the inhabitants of the 
South who are held in servitude, enter in no form into 
the idea of representation, and contribute in no way to 
constitute a Congress of the nation. 

Ours is a Representative Government. But what is 
that ? It is bas.ed on human beings — on persons ; not 
on things — on chattels — on cattle. The essential idea 
in all just notions of representation is, that where in all 
the limits of the territory under the government there is 
a human being, or one who has by nature the rights of a 
man, and who in any way contributes to constitute the 
nation as such, in its existence or greatness, there shall 
be a suitable recognition of that fact in the representa- 
tion in the government \ and that, in this respect, as he 
has by nature the rights of a man, and as his life, liberty, 
and property may be affected by the government, he 
shall be regarded and treated as a human being, as part 
and parcel of the great Confederation. 

As matters are now, gross injustice is done to every 
part of the nation \ gross injustice to ourselves in the 
eyes of the world. The North proclaims the principle 
in relation to their Southern brethren — a princij^le not 
recognized among themselves — that property may be in 
part the basis of representation, and they concede to 
Southern slaveholders what they claim, that their slaves 
shall be regarded as property^ and this odious principle 
the nation proclaims abroad to the whole world : the 
North, thus, with all its zeal for freedom; with all its pro- 
fessed abhorrence of slavery; with all its deep conviction 
that the African is a man like other men, yet declaring its 



50 

willingness that the* only representation which there shall 
be of a human being when a slave — the only recognition 
of him in the halls of legislation, shall be as '' projjerty' — 
as property and nothing else. Meantime, by a compro- 
mise unjust in principle, and inadequate in its influence, 
the North has been all the while deriving an undue 
advantage from this arrangement. In order to counter- 
balance the " concession to the Southern States" that 
their slaves might be represented in the proportion of 
three-fifths of their number as propert}^, it was among 
the unhappy "compromises" of the constitution, that 
" direct taxes should be apportioned by the same rule as 
representation." And as the Confederation in 1783 had 
made it a rule in taxation that the direct taxes should be 
apportioned on the principle that three-fifths of the 
slave population was to be reckoned, it was deemed just 
that the same principle should be adopted in settling the 
number of representatives.* But since direct taxes 
under our government occur at very distant intervals, 
and since the representation in Congress is constant, the 
North has been all the while reaping this advantage 
over the South, paying little in the way of the compen- 
sation, and yet constantly enjoying the advantage in 
Congress derived from the imperfect and unequal repre- 
sentation in the South. 

In the mear^ time, the South has been suffering this 
wrong — that, as now constituted, two-fifths of the 
population, that is of what are now four millions of its 
population, have been Avithout any representation : in 
other words, under the ratio of representation, there 
has been a loss to them of ten, fifteen, or twenty members 
of Congress. 

^ Curiis's History of the Comiitittion. Vol. ii. pp. 48. 160. 



^51 

The true principle of representation would be, un- 
doubtedly, that no human beings should be represented 
as property; that the apportionment should be in 
accordance to the entire population as reported by the 
census-tables; that whatever may be the domestic 
relations of such persons, or wdiatever their condition, as 
sick or well, old or young, ignorant or learned, male or 
female, bond or free, white, copper-colored, black, or 
semi-black, their existence as human beings — as a part 
of the nation — as having rights and interests as human 
beings to be protected — should be recognized in the 
government under which they live. In the carrying out 
of this principle, it is, of course, not necessary that all 
should be eligible to office, nor that all should vote ; not 
that children, or slaves, or Indians, should be admitted 
as lawMiiakers of the land. At the North the people 
regulate this in their own way : so let them do at the 
South. As at the North we do not choose that all 
persons shall be voters ; and as we make distinctions — 
some of them arbitrary and unjust — yet all within our 
powder — so let them do at the South. If they do not 
choose that the slaves shall vote, let it be so — let them 
treat them as we treat the colored population of the 
North; but in the name of humanity and of God, let them 
not be treated as chattels and things by an odious princi- 
ple ; in the name of justice and of equity, let not the 
North derive an advantage from an arrangement founded 
on a principle which the people of the North no where 
else recognize — the right of property in man; in the 
name of justice too and equal rights, let the South be 
entitled to all the representation wdiich she could claim 
based on the Census — on the actual numbers of human 
beings — men, women, and children within the limits of 
the respective States. 



52 



A sixth thing: — The ultimate entire removal of slavery 
from our land is essential to permanent peace. Our his- 
tory, under the Confederation, and now for eighty years 
under the Constitution, has shown that slavery has been, 
and is, almost the only cause of alienation between the 
North and the South, and that but for this there never has 
been any insuperable reason why the North and the South 
should not live and act in harmony. Indeed, on the 
entire surface of the globe there is no one country of 
such an extent, or of any very considerable extent, 
where there are so many causes for iiniiy ; so few for 
division. Of one language ; one religion ; one origin ; 
one general character; — united by vast rivers, and by 
the advantages which each derives from the peculiar 
productions of the other ; united in their history, and by 
all the sacred recollections of the remembered war of 
Independence, there is every reason, in the nature of the 
case, why we should be one. Our fathers felt this ; and 
hence our- glorious Constitution was formed, and we 
should have been now with nothing necessarily producing 
alienation, collision, or war, had it not been for slavery. 
But the same causes w^hich have now produced collision 
on this subject will produce it again ; nor will it ever be 
possible to adjust our free institutions to the idea that 
slavery is to be perpetual in the land. That fact is now^ 
estabhshed; it cannot be denied. The South knows it; 
the North affirms it ; the world sees it. All attempts, 
therefore, to secure permanent peace except on the 
assumption that slavery is somehow to cease ultimately 
in the land, have been demonstrated by our past his- 
tory to be vain. 

Yet it is clear that in securing this result, everything 
must depend on the mode in which it is done — if ever 
done. It cannot be secured by a mere exertion of 



53 

power; by an act from any quarter declaring all the 
slaves at once free. Such a power is not given to any 
individual, or to any body of men under the constitution, 
and however that power maybe believed, in a state of war, 
to be "a military necessity," yet even this could extend 
only to those parts of the country actually in a state of 
insurrection, and could have no applicability to the por- 
tions of the nation that could by any fair construction 
be regarded as loyal. As a civil act ; as an act pertain- 
ing to the General Government, Congress has no such 
power ; the Executive has no such power ; the third 
branch of the government — the Supreme Court — has 
no such power. Most foreigners, and especially those in 
the land from which we have derived our origin, and in 
a great measure our notions of liberty and government,* 
ignorantly, strangely, wilfully fail to comprehend our 
constitution on this subject; and they persevere in a 
determination not to be instructed. England, regarding 
her constitution as the perfection and sum of all wisdom, 
can never be made to understand why or how there should 
be a Government without "a King, Lords, and Commons;" 
or how there can be a Union of states which is not 
exactly like the union of the counties of Durham, 
York, and Lancaster; or like England and Wales; or 
on some such principle as that which unites Scotland and 
Ireland to the crown; or how there can be possibly in 
another land a legislative body that is not formed after 
the exact "pattern" of the British Parliament. Hence 
thus far in eighty years we have never been able so to 
instruct them that they will see that an American 
Congress has not the same power over slavery in the 
States which the British Parliament has over a poor- 

* They understand us much better in France. 



54 

house in the counties of Cornwall or Kent, or as the 
same Parhament had over slavery in the British West 
Indies. They will not yet understand that no authority 
whatever in regard to the direct emancipation of slaves 
has been given to the General Government of our nation; 
and it is. perhaps, now too late to hope that they ever will 
understand this. At home this is understood ; and it is, 
therefore, understood that any attempt to emancipate 
the slaves in this country by a mere act of the General 
Government would be an usurpation of power never con- 
ceded, and equally at the North and the South would 
destroy all hope of an adjustment of our difficulties. 
Besides, if this power were possessed by the General 
Government, and should be exercised by it, no pen could 
describe the evils which would follow from the immediate 
emancipation of four millions of people held in slavery: 
a people unused to freedom; most of whom are unable to 
read; a people unacdustomed to provide for themselves; 
having none of that economy wdiich springs from the 
effort at self-support and the support of families; re- 
strained now and habitually mainly by terror and autho- 
rity, and not by conscience ; and with all the remem- 
bered wrongs committed against them and their fathers. 
Such an act of immediate emancipation would, in all 
human probability, deluge the land in blood, and Avrap it 
in flames. On the other hand, no tongue could describe 
the blessings which might flow from a wise system of 
gradual emancipation : where the end was distinctly con- 
templated, at no remote period, and where a system of 
training preparatory to it should be at once entered 
on, fitting those millions for freedom. Such an act 
would stand forth to the world as among the noblest of 
human achievements — greater than the deliverance of the 



55 

children of Israel from Egyptian bondage ; greater than 
the achievement of the Independence of our country — 
for the numbers are larger than in either of these cases, 
and the wisdom and the power needful would not be less 
than in either. 

But the act of emancipation, if it occurs, should be an 
act in which the nation, as such, should, in every part, 
while claiming no right of direct legislation, bear its share 
of the burden. Slavery has been, to a certain extent, 
national. The disgrace has been national. The Avrong 
has been national — so far as the Constitution has pro- 
tected it ; and, so far as ships fitted out in Northern ports, 
and merchants in Northern cities, have been enriched by 
the traffic in human sinews, it has been national. Bristol 
and Newport in Rhode Island, Boston, New York, 
Philadelphia, haA^e had their share in the profits of the 
slave-trade. Splendid abodes now stand in Bristol and 
Newport whose foundations were laid in blood, and whose 
walls were reared as the result of the slave-trade. Wall 
Street would never have been what it now is, and New 
York might not as yet have travelled far beyond Canal 
Street if it had not been that Whitney — a northern man — 
gave cotton to the world, and if the South had not been 
willing that, on certain well-understood terms, their money 
affairs should be in the hands of the merchants and 
brokers of New York. Whatever there has been in fact 
as the result of slave labor, has gone, among other things, 
directly or indirectly to promote our growth as a nation ; 
and whatever there is of power in this country now to 
affect the manufactures, the trade, the commerce of the 
old world has had a connection of melancholy importance 
with slavery. At this moment, England, France, and Ger- 
many throughout all her borders ; the manufactures and 



56 

the trade not only in Lancashire, hut through the coun- 
tries where the Elbe, the Rhine, and the Danube flow, 
all feel the effect of the want of that which is the result 
of slave labor — cotton : — and all begin to learn a lesson 
which they have been slow to learn, and which it would 
be well for them to learn in other respects than this — how 
greatly they are dependent on the United States ; how 
important is the position which the United States holds 
in the world ; how vital it may be for them to cultivate 
friendly relations with us. 

As in some measure, therefore, a national matter; 
as that which has contributed to the greatness of the 
nation, and which has gone materially to enrich it, it is 
but just that when so vital a change is contemplated as 
the ultimate emancipation of four millions of men, every 
part of the nation should bear its share of the burden ; 
every part of the nation should help to undo the wrong. 
CoMpensation, therefore, in accordance with some equit- 
able rule to those States and individuals which would be 
immediately affected by it, is demanded by every prin- 
ciple of justice; by everything in our nature which 
responds to the claim of what is reciprocal and right. 
It is not, indeed, as a matter Oii 'property \ it need not 
recognize the right of property in human beings. The 
claim is founded rather on a principle of equity, as 
springing from the fact that when, from any revolution 
in a nation's opinions and policy, a material change is to 
be produced in that which men have regarded as con- 
tributing to their prosperity, and of which the nation has 
been in any way a participant^ every part of the nation, 
enriched by that which is to be of value no more, should 
bear its part of the loss and the burden. This may not 
be a legal claim . It may not be a claim which we place 



67 

under the head of strict justice or right. But it is a 
claim which appeals to nohle minds, and noble hearts — 
that where there has been a common wrong, and when 
there is now to be a suffering party, that party should 
not be left to suffer alone. It is, therefore, on the strictest 
principles of mo7'al equity that it has been proposed by 
the highest authority of this nation, that there shall be a 
fair system of compensation proposed for the States 
which are willing to inaugurate a system of gradual 
emancipation. 

Nor will it be a '^ compromise" with slavery, nor an 
acknowledgment that slavery is in itself right, if the sys- 
tem proposed should be gradual. Provided that the 
end is contemplated ; that the thing is to be done ; that 
arrangements are made to do it, and to do it certainly; 
that there is no further defence of it, and no further 
arrangements to perpetuate and extend it; that the 
announcement goes forth to the world that it is the 
purpose of the nation that slavery shall cease, there can 
be no fair construction of such an act by which it can be 
inferred that the system is regarded as right. In such 
an act there would be no mercenary apology for slavery ; 
nay, the purest benevolence may mingle in the act, 
though it is delayed, for the highest interest of the 
enslaved himself may demand that delay. New York, 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, uttered no voice in favor of 
slavery, and made no compromise wdth it, when they 
inaugurated a system of gradual emancipation, and the 
deeply-rooted feeling of those States on the subject is 
proof that there was no lingering love of the system in 
the legislation which prompted to those acts. 

Nor is it needful to any just views of emancipation 
that the freed-men under such a system, or under any 



58 

system, should be expatriated, or removed by power to 
other lands. This is their native land, and they love it. 
The four millions of slaves in our country, excepting the 
few scores that may have been smuggled in contrary to 
the laws, were born here, and have as good a right here 
as any others, for the ''boundaries of their habitation" 
have been fixed here by the great God. Beyond most 
other men, too, the African loves his native soil. He 
has no disposition to leave the place where he has been 
reared, and where he has toiled — even for others ; or even 
to leave those for whom he has toiled, if he is not treated 
with harshness and cruelty. In all that vast territory 
where the African has been compelled to toil, he would 
be a useful and a needed laborer : — not less useful, and 
not less needed, if, as a freeman, trained to freedom, he 
should be compensated as other men are for his labor. 
Free labor in an African would be of more value to a 
country than slave labor, and on the vast cotton fields 
and rice plantations of the South it may always be true 
that the African can perform a work which the white 
man could not endure. There, as freemen, let them live 
and labor, enjoying the avails of their labor as other men 
do ; represented in the National Government as a part of 
the population of the land ; recognized and treated as 
made in the image of God. If they prefer, as freemen, 
to return to the land of their fathers' sepulchres, let us 
help them. To other lands now barbarous and savage, 
not driven there, not compelled to go, they might bear, 
as they would bear, juster notions of industry, and thrift, 
and liberty, and religion than now prevail there ; and colo- 
nies voluntarily formed, and sustained by those who have 
oppressed them, might be the means of establishing there 
the institutions of civilization, religion, and the arts. 



59 

Africa, blessed by the voluntary return of her sons, may 
yet forget the wrongs that have been clone to her, and 
slavery may yet be numbered among the evils that 
have been overruled by divine Providence for the good 
of mankind. 

A sixth principle, founded on such views as have now 
been presented, and claimed, it seems to me, with exact 
justice by the South, is that slavery as to its control, and 
as to all the laws regulating it, is to be left to the States 
as such, in all respects, absolutely and exclusively. 

It is a settled principle in all just laws, now admitted 
everywhere, as already remarked, that slavery is only a 
creation of law; that it is not a condition of nature ; and 
that where there is no law to make a man a slave, he is 
free. If it be by the laws of war, if it be by the laws 
of debt, if it be by laws pertaining to crime ; then 
those laAvs, and those alone, define the existence, the 
locality, and the extent of the bondage or servitude of 
man. Just or unjust, then, the regulation is a muni- 
cipal regulation, and the institution is a " domestic" in- 
stitution, and as such it should be left to the States them- 
selves. Like other local matters — things of domestic 
concern, it should be limited there, and when those bounds 
over which those domestic laws extend are passed, then 
any human being should breathe the air which other men 
breathe. Men at the South have claimed that we have 
no right to interfere with their institutions. As far as 
they and we have made them a national concern, we 
have such a right, for so far it pertains to us as it does to 
them. But let it be so ; let it be as they desire ; let 
slavery be a local institution; let it be like other domestic 
arrangements ; let it be wholly detached from all con- 
nection with the General Government; let all laws in 



60 

relation to it outside of the respective States where it 
exists cease, and cease forever. Beyond that right which 
all men have to spread abroad light and truth ; to diffuse 
their sentiments as they may ; to publish books, to preach 
the gospel, to persuade men to do what is right, and to 
avoid what is wrong, let there be no asserted right 
of interference; let there be no interference. Let 
it be placed on the same footing in this respect, as 
other matters that relate to the interests of the 
people of the land. It is rare that any of our interests, 
of persons, property, liberty, reputation, come in direct 
contact with the General Government. The ordinary 
course of af[\iirs in which all are interested, is through 
the State considered in this respect as sovereign. ^' It 
is to the State Government that a man looks to pro- 
tect his property, and secure his personal safety. It is 
the State Government which makes the laws that affect 
all his daily transactions, and it is the tribunals of the 
State Government which decide all the ordinary ques- 
tions arising between man and man." Thus let slavery 
be. — This is no unholy compromise of truth ; it is no 
compromise at all, farther than when we seek to spread 
truth and learning, liberty and religion, in Turkey, or 
India, or Burmah, or China, or Italy, by the gospel, we 
go under an implied pledge not to attempt a direct inter- 
ference with the laws — the local laws of these lands. 

One other principle, as following from these views, re- 
mains to be stated. It is, that the entire subject of 
restoring fugitive slaves should be a matter of negotia- 
tion and arrangement between the States themselves. If 
as States independent in such matters, as in other local 
matters, they can enter into such negotiations and 
arrangements, well; if not, let not the power of the 



61 

General Government be prostituted and profaned in the 
work of arresting men who pant for freedom ; let not its 
judges " pollute the purity of the ermine" by remanding 
freemen to bondage ; let not the army of the nation be em- 
ployed to force their return at the point of the bayonet. 
Let no conscientious and peaceful citizen be required to 
engage under severe pains and penalties in reducing men 
and women to slavery. Let not the Government of the 
United States continue to place itself in this false position 
before the world, the only free government on earth, 
and yet the only government in all the nations that binds 
itself to do such a deed. 

As the South claim that this is an institution of their 
own with which we have no right to intermeddle, let it 
be so. Let us not volunteer to interfere. If they can 
make an arrangement with Border States, equally inde- 
pendent in such subjects, an arrangement for their recip- 
rocal good, well ; if not, let that be an end of the matter. 
If such States acquiesce in this; if they deem it just to 
others, or best for themselves, let them do it in their 
own way, and on their own responsibihty, and let the 
Fugitive Slave Law be blotted from the statute book of 
the nation forever and ever. 

I know that I have been too long in this service ; but 
neither you nor I will ever attend a Thanksgiving service 
in such circumstances again. I have seldom, if ever in 
my life, spoken with so much diffidence or distrust, in 
regard to the sentiments which I have felt it my duty to 
advance. That these sentiments will be regarded as 
practically wise by any considerable portion of those 
whom I have addressed, or adopted by the country, I am 
not sanguine in believing. That they are more just in 
describing the evil, than wise in proposing a remedy, per- 



G2 

haps I should be as readily disposed to grant, as any 
would to assert. But these things which I will now 
suggest in a few words, would follow if the nation should 
ever admit the propriety of these principles ; and the 
prospect, however dim it may now be that they will 
occur, should be a cause of thanksgiving, just in propor- 
tion as the eye of faith or patriotism can see any evidence 
that they will occur. 

The nation would be one ; there would be one flag, one 
system of laws, one religion; we should be one people. 

The occasion for war, so far as it has sprung from 
slavery, and there has been no other occasion for war 
in this nation, would cease, and we might hope would 
cease forever. 

The conscience of the North would be relieved, as 
having no further complicity with slavery, and as being 
henceforward in no way responsible for it : — conscience, 
the most troublesome thing in a nation to manage, the 
most difficult to be subdued. 

The rights of the South would be secured — secured in 
what they regard as their rights ; secured in that of which 
they are deprived — a just and equal representation in 
Congress ; secured as to any invasion from the North on 
their institutions ; secured in what they choose to regard 
as valuable domestic arrangements ; secured in regard to 
any direct interference with arrangements which they 
think proper to cherish. 

As a nation we should so stand before the world as 
to command the respect and the confid^ce of mankind. 
No longer could it be charged upon us that the National 
Government is the bulwark of slavery ; that its legislation 
is adverse to freedom ; that the power of the nation is 
pledged to perpetuate the system ; that it is represented 
in the National Councils ; that the Government shocks 



63 

^^ the moral sentiments of mankind by its enactments, and 
* ^urns Way Hhe x^ym^at h igs of the friends of Hberty 



."^everywhere. \ ^^V .— ^ <i ^» 

^5lavery,M^o?twc 

everywhere, and the* sla^ hitn^e^if,- with no disposition, 



\ Slavery ,MSo?twould^comg:jtp. an end. Surrounded on 
y** everj^r^ide by^Free litates, its value woiSTj" diminish 



.\ 



. as he has none, to leave the land of his*bifih, Voult^B^ 
come more valuable so'anler or later, by doing the ^vork of 
"•^ ^arfreeman»,ia*id by receiving^ the^compensatibn oY freedorh: "' 
It may as well be Knpwn^iow as ever, i^s no^f'k*no^V^l, - 
that §MVe*ry %^ii!ie>t:^long>^xis^in this^ country wdien the 
protection of the National Government is withdrawn!'?i«qi& 
^n^timtthe hope of it ceasing is in the prospect that 
lat Mifional protection will be withdrawn. 
* ' T%i^^pPlf^ fi^^^iji^La-lichj^^t^pi^sperous^happy; 
- a land where some one sMll yet^eclar^fl^he^fflmias^^ 



^y* 



N >.*>•, 



I havejone word more. The best intellect of the nation 
is yet to be called fonh t*^ttle%Le gi^^at ^rinciJM»efe*.n->-, 
A ^:v, \''0»vied'in fli^pi;esen^)loody strife. The highest talent of 

\the nation has not been developeoMis y^t I^Tfl^^vai'^^ttaie*-. 
*ld§l'iest talent of a nation is never devejl>ped in war. 
There slumber yet in this land, somiewherl^ great mental 
^^.y^ powers yet undeveloped ; statesmanlike abilities not yet 
^^^ unfolded ; principles of lofty patriotism yet to be mani- 
fested aside from '^war* powers TT far-i?08(rchin;g d^i^o- 
]^^' ifkd^'whWi w-aJK giJasf)f dlese^great^,q.uestions, and the^ 
issue,* in an honorable and a perpetW peace,''iiPne\r^^ '^' 
^rarra^feme1ftts*adaptedfitofour eo^«iky^i-a these».time^., will 
place such names ever onward by the side* of tllose'of 
Franklin, and Madison, and Jay, and Hamilton, and 



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